"I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life."

"You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phoney stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart."

"I felt so damn happy all of a sudden, the way old Phoebe kept going around and around. I was damn near bawling, I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth."

"Its really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs."

"There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It's peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy."

"I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty... you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are."

"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's."

"It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to."

"I don't even like old cars. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake."

"People never notice anything."

"I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot."

"I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect."

"What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while. What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though."

"All morons hate it when you call them a moron."

"A confessional passage has probably never been written that didn't stink a little bit of the writer's pride in having given up his pride."

"I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy."

"People never believe you."

"How do you know you're going to do something, untill you do it?"

"Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell."

"How long should a man's legs be? Long enough to touch the ground."

"The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly."

"They didn't act like people and they didn't act like actors. It's hard to explain. They acted more like they knew they were celebrities and all. I mean they were good, but they were too good."

"Mothers are all slightly insane."

"He had a theory, Walt did, that the religious life, and all the agony that goes with it, is just something God sics on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world."

"I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody."